Graduate Mini Conference 2022

Each year in the first week of Hilary Term our graduate students give an oral presentation to the department to transfer to, or to confirm their DPhil status. Each year our students confirm the breadth and quality of research happening across the department. Here is a preview by research theme…..

Earth Resources

Hendrik Droste: The sedimentary record of ophiolite obduction in North Oman
Primary supervisor: Michael Searle, Time: Monday, 14.40pm

Hendrik aims to understand processes of continental margin collapse and infill of both the foreland basin and the hinterland basin during the Late Cretaceous ophiolite obduction in North Oman. 

Tobermory Mackay-Champion: A seismological and geological analysis of the Zambian Copperbelt mineral system, and the implications for the targeting of high-grade ore deposits
Primary supervisor: Mike Kendall, Time: Tuesday, 12.40pm

Copper is an essential commodity for the transition into a green economy. This research comprises a seismological and geological analysis of the Zambian Copperbelt mineral system, with the aim of improving the targeting of high-grade Cu-ore deposits.

Martin Purkiss: Quantifying subsidence and uplift in the Katangan Basin of Central Africa: their impact on palaeoenvironments and metallogenesis
Primary supervisor: Michael Daly, Time: Tuesday, 12.00pm

Reybi Waren: Rift initiation, structurally controlled topography, and long-term slip rates during basement extension
Primary supervisor: Joe Cartwright, Time: Tuesday, 10.20am

Geodesy, Tectonics, Volcanology and Related Hazards

Kyra Cutler: Developing a novel magmatic hygrometer using hydrogen in plagioclase
Primary supervisor: Mike Cassidy, Time: Monday, 11.40am

Miriam Gauntlett: A Seismic Investigation of the Magmatic and Hydrothermal Systems of Nabro Volcano and other East African Rift Volcanoes
Primary supervisor: Mike Kendall, Time: Monday, 09.20am

Daniel Gittins: Understanding the physical processes causing surface creep on faults
Primary supervisor: Jessica Hawthorne, Time: Tuesday, 10.00am

Dan discusses how he uses creepmeters to investigate the size of creep events on the creeping section of the San Andreas Fault. These innocuous small bursts of slip are not quite what they first appear!

Asri Indraswari: The influence of sediment thermal maturity and hydrocarbon formation on Hg behaviour in the geological record
Primary supervisor: Tamsin Mather, Time: Monday, 10.40am

Asri explores the influence of thermal maturation on sedimentary Hg using three cores through the Lower Jurassic Posidonia Shale Formation from the Lower Saxony Basin, Germany.

Benedict Johnson: Active Tectonics of Central Asian mountain ranges
Primary supervisor: Richard Walker, Time: Tuesday, 9.40am

Alice Paine: Sniffing out global volcanic fingerprints using mercury in Quaternary sedimentary records
Primary supervisor: Tamsin Mather, Time: Monday, 10.00am

Geophysics & Geodynamics

Rebecca Colquhoun: Investigating Earthquake Determinism with a multi-method approach
Primary supervisor: Jessica Hawthorne, Time: Monday, 9.00am

Rebecca is discussing how they use different attributes of seismograms to investigate earthquake determinism. Essentially, at what point in an earthquake is the final magnitude determined, and what does that mean for the mechanics of earthquakes?

Luke Kearney: Fluid escape pipe formation in the Levant basin
Primary supervisor: Richard Katz, Time: Monday, 12.40pm

Neill Marshall: Earthquakes and Active Tectonics of the Eastern Caspian Region
Primary supervisor: Richard Walker, Time: Monday, 12.20pm

Alice Turner: Repeating earthquakes across the Earth-Moon system
Primary supervisor: Jessica Hawthorne, Time: Tuesday, 9.20am

Hanwen Zhang: Basal hydrofractures near sticky patches
Primary supervisor: Richard Katz, Time: Monday, 15.00pm

Biao Wang: The Effects of Displacive Phase Transitions in the Earth’s Mantle on Seismic Wave Propagation Studied by Time-Resolved X-ray Diffraction (TR-XRD) in a Dynamic Diamond Anvil Cell (dDAC)
Primary supervisor: Hauke Marquardt, Time: Monday, 10.20am

Oceanography, Climate and Palaeoenvironment

Xiaoxu Ma: Environmental selection for calcification abilities of coccolithophore
Primary supervisor: Rosalind Rickaby, Time: Tuesday, 12.20pm

Oliver Tooth: Lagrangian Views of the Overturning Circulation in the subpolar North Atlantic Ocean
Primary supervisor: Helen Johnson, Time: Monday, 14.20pm

Noam Vogt-Vincent: Biophysical effects of flow around ocean islands
Primary supervisor: Helen Johnson, Time: Tuesday, 14.20pm

Noam is running state-of-the-art simulations of the southwestern Indian Ocean to investigate how ocean currents connect coral reefs across Seychelles and the wider region, to inform marine conservation efforts.

Palaeobiology and Evolution

Ben Igielman: An analyses of the phylogeny of early tetrapods with a particular focus on Westlothiana, Casineria and Solenodonsaurus, and novel anatomical information of the aforementioned taxa
Primary Supervisor: Roger Benson, Time: Tuesday, 14.40pm

Jack McMinn: How has the biogeography of Gondwanan mammalian clades varied across deep time?
Primary supervisor: Erin Saupe, Time: Monday, 14.00pm

The ecological prominence of marsupial and placental mammals is different in Australasia vs S. America – why? With ecological niche modelling, Jack is calculating where ideal habitat for mammal groups was across prehistory, allowing us to reconstruct biogeographical trends!

Duhita Naware: Analysing the role of biotic dispersal and climate in shaping the evolutionary histories of fleshy-fruited plants and frugivores
Primary supervisor: Roger Benson, Time: Tuesday, 14.00pm

Planetary Evolution and Materials

Daniel Halford: Determination of the Processes Which Control Natural Gas Release from the Deep Continental Crust, Mid Continental, USA
Primary supervisor: Chris Ballentine, Time: Tuesday, 15.00pm

Bei Bei Morrison-Evans: Chemical differentiation of subduction zone magmas
Supervisors: Jon Blundy, Time: Monday, 9.40am

Sanjana Sridhar: The Chemical Evolution of Chondrite Components: Implications for Mixing in the Solar Nebula
Primary supervisor: James Bryson, Time: Monday 11.20am

Viktoria Trautner: Iron spin crossovers in Earth’s lower mantle: effects on mineral properties and geophysical observables
Primary supervisor: Hauke Marquardt, Time: Monday 12.00am